Matthias wrote:So you don't like big anything: government, state, company, etc. Do you disapprove of state governments then? I would be willing to bet that some states have a larger overall organization than the federal Department of Agriculture.

In any case, your concern is completely theoretical for this issue. This is not a regulation being issued by a mid-level functionary buried in the bureaucracy. This is a proposed regulation announced by the Secretary himself and reported by the media. So whatever existential concerns you have, it's inappropriately placed in this instance.I have no problem with big companies if they are able to scale their business model. If they can't they will disappear or shrink via divestiture or BK restructuring or liquidiation.

I disapprove of most govt, especially federal govt, but if I have to have more govt than I want, I prefer it at the state & local level so that at least the distance between assorted underlings and appointees and their elected superiors is shorter. It's also just a better way of problem-solving b/c as states experiment with different programs (TennCare anyone?) they can learn from each other on what works and what doesn't instead of rolling the dice that a one-size-fits-all federal program will be able to solve the problems of an increasingly diverse population with increasingly diverse needs.

Regarding the AgSec, i guarantee you this idea was not his brainchild. It is the product a number of unelected people who may or may not be in a position to exercise political influlence on the policy-writing process. As the AgSec Vilsack gets to make the announcement, but the work he puts into every little thing the department does is quite limited aside from an occasional thing here or there.

There's a difference between saying, "drive from Chicago to Cleveland" and handing you a map of directions on how to get there.

One distinction is how you track and verify that an animal is, indeed, from the country of origin that you say. Do you keep them separate via pens? Do you institute ID tags for all animals? How do you do it? And what is the penalty if one of your workers screws up (or many of your workers screw up repeatedly) and mis-labels something? Those are big differences between enacting a voluntary program and a government mandated, and thus controlled, one.

My read is that the industry is just going to be told "go to Cleveland or we'll make you do it. We don't care how you get there as long as you get there". They are not allowed to go to Akron. That's fine, but its wrong for them to pretend like Akron was ever an option, which is exactly was 'voluntary' means.